Managing Branch Office Network Performance in the Cloud Era
Posted by: kathleenisobel in: ● February 22, 2012
An increase in cloud services means more branch office-based users than ever. According to studies by Gartner and others, 85% – 90% of the average company’s employees now work away from the main corporate office. Those remote workers still need the same high-quality experience of application access and performance as employees at headquarters– especially because many of them have customer-facing roles.
Branch locations often have lower-performing network technology to begin with, and the ongoing practice of consolidating IT resources away from branch locations further compounds network QoS challenges. Meanwhile, the need for pervasive wireless connectivity and mobile device support has rapidly become the norm.
Given all that, it is no surprise that many branch office employees complain of chronically poor application response time and reliability.
Trends around cloud computing and SaaS adoption turn the heat up even higher. Cloud-based applications and data are not only “more remote” but also more dependent on network performance. Accessing more and more remote services over the WAN greatly increases the likelihood of bandwidth, latency and QoS issues, and further complicates the task of managing the performance of branch office networks.
As the network manager, the ability to validate and assure service quality is essential. Yet you often lack visibility into the user experience. This is particularly true for cloud and SaaS services, since these may not pass through a central monitoring point and are delivered over highly complex multi-owned third party networks.
IT is also challenged with troubleshooting in today’s bandwidth-hungry, network-sensitive applications. Is degrading application performance a result of insufficient bandwidth, inefficient application design, spikes in network usage, or some other issue that you can’t see? Sending network engineers to remote sites is expensive, and often fails to resolve intermittent problems. A lack of visibility and performance metrics also makes it difficult to optimize the network or plan for new services or capacity upgrades – a major concern as more and more organizations transform their network architectures to better support cloud services.
To pinpoint and rectify problems and ensure the quality of cloud and SaaS applications (as well as other bandwidth-intensive, IP-based services like IP storage, VoIP, video conferencing and virtual desktop infrastructure), you need the capability to remotely monitor bandwidth, latency and other key metrics across the network path end-to-end — from branch locations to third-party clouds and back, regardless of who owns the networks.
End-to-end visibility into network performance is the only way to know what services are consuming what network resources; and to understand the level of service quality remote users are experiencing. It is also extremely helpful for monitoring and tuning network performance in the context of cloud-driven network topology changes and the rollout of new, IP-based services.
AppNeta’s PathView Cloud service meets the requirements of any size organization for remote network performance monitoring and management. It delivers unlimited insight and is simple and cost-effective to deploy and manage, while readily scaling to meet the evolving needs of today’s branch and microbranch locations and their diverse cloud service traffic.
For more information visit www.appneta.com.
Network Performance Management: A Look Back to 2006
Posted by: kathleenisobel in: ● February 13, 2012
Remember when data, video and voice networks were separate? Before cloud was a buzz word, cellphones were only for calls, virtualization was in its infancy and what’s an iPad? Considering all of these changes, it seems an impossible job for network teams to maintain high functioning networks and applications with the flood of changes we have experienced throughout the IT industry. As we are now well into 2012, let’s take a quick visit to what has changed during the past six years.
Managing large, complex, distributed networks has never been easy. But with the dramatic changes that have taken place in both the technology and business landscapes in the past few years, it’s arguably never been harder. Let’s take a look at some of the key trends that have radically transformed our networks – and what it takes to manage their performance – just since 2006.
Network Convergence
The convergence of all forms of communication from texting, to gaming, to streaming onto IP networks has become ubiquitous since 2006, due to the convenience, flexibility, manageability and cost reductions that it offers in comparison with separate infrastructures.
But as users exchange increasingly rich and varied content over the Internet and corporate networks, the demand for more and more bandwidth has grown exponentially. At the same time, IP-based applications have grown increasingly sophisticated and hence increasingly dependent on “clean” network capacity to function optimally. Network managers must not only provide enough capacity, but also ensure that latency, jitter and packet loss are minimized.
Virtualization
In July of 2006, VMware released its VMware Server. Virtualization technologies of all kinds have continued to proliferate and mature as businesses look to save money and streamline their physical IT infrastructures. Of course, an offset of increased virtualization is massively increased network traffic. Distributed virtual server instances must communicate over the network, for example.
Cloud and SaaS
Cloud computing leverages virtualization but takes it to a higher level. There was essentially no buzz about cloud in 2006 – now it has become mainstream.
The key impact of cloud on networks is increased utilization – and a greater need for end-to-end monitoring – as more users interact remotely with performance-sensitive, distributed cloud services. Increased network utilization due to deployment of “private” cloud-based applications has become a major reason why organizations need to pre-assess their network capacity before moving mission-critical business procedures to the cloud.
BYOD
Six years ago, smart phones were much less prevalent than today and tablet computers like the now-omnipresent iPad barely existed. Users are demanding the right to bring their own devices (BYOD) to work, and to be constantly connected to the corporate network.
For the network administrator of 2006, network devices were much better controlled. Healthy devices generally meant a healthy network, and SNMP was available to help ensure visibility. Today SNMP data alone is inadequate to monitor and manage complex, distributed network paths and the proliferation of mobile devices that roam free across corporate WANs.
The Economy
Back in 2006 the US economy was still ticking along nicely. There were concerns about a slowdown, but nothing like the seismic shocks experienced since.
In comparison, today’s IT departments have weathered layoffs, outsourcing, budget cuts and limited resources. The result is a “do more with less” mindset, with a focus on leveraging current investments to the max, and finding the cheapest way possible to implement anything new.
As a result, IT departments are moving away from complex monitoring solutions and embracing small-footprint, inexpensive tools. Many organizations now lack the headcount to manage sophisticated network instrumentation. Today’s multi-tasking administrator handling network monitoring is most concerned with straightforward visibility into the network so he or she can quickly pinpoint and resolve problems, and move on.
A further ramification of this trend is an emphasis on proactively preventing network performance issues. Forward-looking network managers are seeking ways to streamline and fine-tune their networks for optimal efficiency, as opposed to simply “adding more bandwidth.”
A Prognosis
As we look back on the network performance management challenges of 2012 from, say, 2018, what will we see? Very possibly an even more complete reliance on high capacity, high performance, low latency, widely distributed networks to convey ever-greater volumes of all forms of data.
End-to-end insight into key performance metrics like capacity, latency, jitter and packet loss along the entire network path from source to destination and back will probably be more important than ever. So will the ability to monitor network health remotely, and to deploy network performance management tools quickly and cheaply as the network morphs and technology changes.
For network administrators, network engineers and other networking professionals, these are interesting times.
HTML5 Is Ready For Prime Time – And So Are We!
Posted by: stevensmatt in: ● February 8, 2012
There is a lot of good material in the blog-o-sphere about HTML5 vs. Flash and the impending doom of the latter. I’m here to say that HTML5, while still a work in progress, is absolutely ready for prime time and if anyone says you have to wait for it to be ready, they’re either ill-informed or just plain misleading.
You’ve probably heard the news that Adobe had dropped Flash support mobile platforms (yes, Steve was more right than wrong on this one too.)
For mobile developers or even general web developers looking to build a rich internet application (RIA), the loss (Android) or non-arrival (iOS) of Flash reduces the options for building a RIA substantially (for iOS, it’s effectively a choice between HTML5 or writing a native iOS application).
To be sure, Flash isn’t entirely going away anytime soon – for desktop platforms it will probably be around for many more years (it’s a good platform!) as it often sneaks in from 3rd party content that is part of a given site’s layout even if not part of the main site’s content. But with the ever-growing population of flash-less mobile devices being used to browse the web, website site designers (and web-based application developers) are increasingly removing all flash content in order to deliver the same “end user experience” regardless of which platform a site is viewed from.
At AppNeta, we made the complete transition a few years back from a “thick client” UI (written in 100% Java) that needed to be downloaded, installed and maintained on each user’s desktop, to a 100% web-based UI able to be consumed easily from any standard browser. But we didn’t want to give up the interactivity or the presentation options that a thick client offered, so we made heavy use of Flash via Adobe’s open source Flex software development kit. In general, we’ve been very pleased with the results and we receive frequent positive feedback on the look and feel and well as smooth operation of our UI from our 1000′s of end-users across all the major browsers. Kudos to Adobe (and the AppNeta development team) for enabling such a nice user experience from a 100% web-based UI.
If it’s not broken, don’t fix it, right?
But that’s the rub – it _is_ broken.
The PathView Cloud Network Performance Management hosted service is designed to be consumed and used interactively by many different user types ranging from hard-core network engineers (who require instant drill-down and data-mining through a year’s minute-by-minute historical performance data) all the way to IT and Service Delivery management (who need a SLA or SLO report on how their services are running and being consumed by their end-user). And all of these different users require instant access from anyplace at any time – and the “user experience” needs to be consistent, regardless of the device they’re using to access the PathView Cloud service. That’s where the “Flash” / “no Flash” breaks things for our customers.
Today, we partially solve this issue dynamically on the fly for any device that doesn’t have Flash locally installed by smartly auto-rendering content on the server side and presenting it as static JPEG images to the end user. This is a very clever way to enable users to see a close approximation to what they’d see if they had Flash installed locally, but of course the local interactivity of Flash is lost.
When we introduced our latest FlowView add-on for traffic analysis, we knew we were bringing something special to the market in terms of flow-based traffic analysis that could be consumed by anyone, anywhere and without the traditional need to enable netflow, jflow, sflow (or any-other-flow type) on an existing infrastructure. This is a BIG deal. Our original plan was to use Flash for the interactive UI components like we do elsewhere in PathView Cloud, but knowing that our mobile-based users would really want the same level of look and feel (and interactivity!) as our desktop-based customers for this powerful add-on, we decided to test out the HTML5 waters.
In a nutshell, we were very pleasantly surprised with what was possible (today!) with the current generation of browsers using HTML5. We even found a solution for Internet Explorer version 8 (where HTML5 support is known to be fairly limited). We were so pleased in fact, that we released our FlowView update last month in a 100% HTML5 only version – no Flash anywhere. There are some minor presentation things we can’t do quite as well in HTML5 as in Flash (and even those were mostly a factor of learning curve vs. a core technology limitation), but in general the feedback has been very positive. Our mobile device users in particular are very happy.
If you want to check how well your current web browser of choice is doing handling HTML5 today, browse over to http://html5test.com/ - it’s a quick and comprehensive way to score HTML5 browser functionality. Below is screenshot from a typical result showing the actual score out of possible 475:
At the end of the day it really comes down to this; so long Flash – it was great while it lasted. Hello HTML5 – welcome to the party; we’re looking forward to using you completely throughout our UI over the coming months.
If you want to check out our HTML5 implementation for yourself, head over to www.appneta.com/live-demo and we’d love you here your feedback.
How Network Speed & Duplex Settings Can Ruin Your Day (and your application performance)
Posted by: adamtedwards in: ● February 6, 2012
It never fails to amaze me how simple network configuration settings can affect application performance, especially the details that are so susceptible to human error. A global business services provider recently deployed PathView Cloud to monitor network performance between several contact centers. This customer uses VoIP to connect contact centers, and the desktop experience is delivered by VDI. End-to-end Quality of Service (QoS) for multiple queues is important. So, assuring VoIP quality across 3rd party WAN links, VDI network performance (capacity), and validating QoS – all a routine and perfect fit for PathView Cloud.
On our first performance check-up with the customer following deployment, poor VoIP performance was reported between two U.S. and UK sites. We hadn’t yet configured notification and scheduled report distribution, so we did a quick check of the path’s performance in PathView’s monitoring module. As you can see in the screen shot below, a high degree of packet loss was observed affecting data and voice. Network capacity was degraded and a large number of impairment events were logged.
The customer had deployed Solarwinds Orion NPM, but they didn’t see a hint of poor performance. We reviewed a series of automated diagnostics in PathView, and it was evident that there was a speed and duplex mismatch between customer and carrier-managed switches.
See how performance can go from perfect at hop 3 to poor at hop 4.
Hop 4’s sub millisecond latency and IP address format indicated the full-half duplex issue was close to the source appliance location at the handoff to the ISP. A quick check with the ISP confirmed that a morning ISP maintenance activity included hard coding speed and duplex in a switch port serving the customer.
The impact significantly impacted VoIP and desktop services at the new site, and a follow up change request was affected the next morning to correct the settings. When it comes to speed and duplex remember a simple rule: auto negotiation on both ports usually works well, as does forcing both ports to the same values. Mixing auto and hard coded often results in mismatch and results in high packet loss as the network is loaded. Packet Loss with voice and video is immediately noticeable, and web applications will slow to a crawl as lost packets are re-transmitted.
You can see in the following screen shot (the ‘after’ picture) where packet loss resolves and network capacity approaches the expected value.
Several lessons can be learned: First, always monitor the network path health connecting your key delivery points to consumption location. Monitoring devices you own is a plus, but not relevant to application performance. Second, always perform a pre-deployment assessment when bringing new sites, WAN circuits, and applications like VoIP and VDI online. Assess for a week or two rather than an hour or two.
And finally, never underestimate the impact of a simple configuration issue like speed and duplex.
Legacy on the Line
Posted by: timferg in: ● February 3, 2012
You won’t hear Tom Brady or Eli Manning speaking publicly about how much this game means to their legacy, but it’s certainly on the mind of everyone not involved with the game this coming Sunday. A win for either of them puts an exclamation mark on their career while a loss has harsh ramifications for their legacy.
Eli Manning
A win against the Patriots puts him in the football Hall of Fame. Two Super Bowl victories against one of the best franchises and quarterbacks of the time cements him as an elite quarterback. A victory would also set the wheels in motion for a true Eli vs. Peyton debate. To date, Peyton only has one Super Bowl victory, and he lost the last one he was in, throwing an untimely interception to lose to the Saints. The potential for Eli to surpass Peyton’s shadow will be there and a Super Bowl MVP wouldn’t hurt his cause.
A loss still nets him a successful season, but it gives him a bigger mountain to climb if he ever wants to be a Hall of Fame candidate. The comparisons to Peyton won’t even be up for consideration until he wins another Super Bowl. His proclamation that he is an elite quarterback will be scoffed at, especially if he struggles against the Patriots less than stellar defense.
Tom Brady
A win will put him for many people as the greatest quarterback in NFL history. At the very least, a win would put him as one of the top 3 quarterbacks in the modern era, somewhere in the pack of Montana and Marino. The debate of Brady vs. Peyton will take a swift turn in Tom’s favor. That debate might not end but Peyton fans will have a tougher hill to climb and be sufficiently downgraded in numbers. If Brady wins it will be his fourth Super Bowl victory, which will tie him with Joe Montana and Terry Bradshaw. That, in combination with another career season, makes his Hall of Fame induction all the more certain.
A loss would effectively eliminate Brady from the “Greatest of All Time” discussion. He’d be a candidate for certain but few if any would have a legitimate argument for #1 overall. This is a harsh and unfair reality, but losing two Super Bowls and being unable to win another after your 5th year would be a sufficient knock against him, especially since the Patriots have not won the Super Bowl since the “spy gate” incident. It would also seem to create a kryptonite for Brady’s legacy; the New York Giants.
Predict the final score of the game BEFORE SUNDAY and win a full year of FREE PathView Cloud including path-based SLA verification, in depth netflow/traffic analysis, 100% packet capture capabilities and active application performance monitoring (at a value of $8,900!!).
Top 5 Things You Must Have in Your Network Performance Management Tool
Posted by: admin in: ● February 2, 2012
There are quite a few network performance management tools available today from Open Source to enterprise mainstays. But which one is right for your business? What tools give you the features and value you need to assure network performance and minimize downtime, frustration and finger-pointing?
The outcome of business initiatives depends directly on a tool that provides understandable, accurate and actionable data. The correct investment will augment organizational and individual objectives to increase productivity, performance and savings.
This checklist covers the five most important capabilities to look for in a network performance management solution. If it doesn’t have these features, it cannot fully meet the needs of a progressive business, especially as the IT landscape continues to rapidly change.
1) Unlimited visibility – including networks you don’t own or control
The most common services rolled out today rely on the proper operation of 3rd party networks, either the services are hosted “in the cloud” or they are being delivered to mobile users. Lack of visibility is a major challenge for network administrators. If you can’t see what’s going on, how can you fix it? You need unlimited visibility to pinpoint and resolve problems effectively. Unlimited visibility means visibility into your own networks, public networks and those of third-party providers – into any IP-based target, anywhere packets can travel.
2) No-hassle deployment
Most IT departments don’t have the time or resources to dedicate to cumbersome installations, unwieldy configurations or finicky little agents. When you’re dealing with network performance problems that are affecting your users right no, this is especially clear. You need a solution that you can deploy quickly, and get results quickly so that you can address problems effectively and keep the business running. Network teams don’t have the time or resources to manage software, buy new servicers or manage agents.
3) Cloud-based service
Everybody knows the advantages of cloud-based services such as scalability, pay-as-you-go cost savings, ease of and access to product upgrades to name a few. But for network performance management – particularly over distributed networks – the advantages of the cloud are even greater. A cloud-based network performance management service can give you remote management capability across and between all of your sites. You can see into any location, from any location, at any time. No need to send a network engineer on-site when you can find and fix the problem from wherever you are located Now that’s cost savings…
4) Advanced reporting
Let’s face it: if you don’t have easy-to-read reports with automated reporting capabilities to get your job done, you can’t easily share data with your boss, your service providers or your business stakeholders. Reporting shouldn’t be some arcane ritual that only the initiated can participate in. It should be part of the transparency and accountability that keeps IT aligned with the business. Additionally the reports that are generated should not require an advanced degree to interpret what they are telling you. You rely on your network for the proper operation of your key applications, and the reports should put that performance in the context that is most meaningful — will your applications work well? Your network performance management solution should offer scheduled reporting, as well as proactive email alerting when performance thresholds are violated.
5) Affordability
These days there’s no need to break your budget on expensive, cumbersome systems for network performance management. A variety of tools are now available at affordable price points that offer high-end capabilities once found only in complex, high-end solutions.
PathView Cloud meets all the above requirements, ensuring you have the capabilities necessary to assure network performance and pinpoint and resolve problems quickly and accurately. Available as a zero-administration, cloud-based service, PathView Cloud offers a complete, tightly integrated service for path-based SLA validation, active performance monitoring and pre-deployment assessment capabilities and 100% netflow/traffic analysis and simple, remote packet capture.
PathView Cloud enables you to see exactly where issues start within your network, so you can fix them fast.
For more information on how PathView Cloud compares to other network performance management tools, check out this video or Try out the free trial on your network today!
CEO Notes…AppNeta is All-in for the Patriots
Posted by: melvinjim in: ● January 29, 2012
Boston is a great sports town.
We’ve had Stanley Cups, World Series and too many playoffs to count! And today, it is a great time to be a Patriots Fan, and a great time to be at AppNeta!
As the Pats have fought their way to the top, AppNeta is rocking our way into another great quarter of customer success with our new Cloud-based performance management service, PathView Cloud. Our mission is simple: assuring exceptional application delivery, over any network, from any location. Sounds simple enough, but successful delivery of today’s applications is just about as complex as predicting the winner of the Super Bowl this year. In fact, the analogy is stronger than you might think…
If you are running a Vegas casino, there are many variables you might consider, study, and use to predict the outcome including stats on every position player, offense, defense, special teams, and the history of key players. Math and science can provide powerful insight. If you are an average Joe betting on the office pool, you bet on your home team, or your favorite quarterback, and of course, hope.
Hope is not a strategy.
Now let’s consider application delivery over complex networks. PathView enables our customers to clearly understand key variables such as available and utilized bandwidth, latency, loss and jitter across your application delivery environment as well as actual application performance over the service delivery path. Without that level of detailed insight,well, there is always hope.
Hope is not a strategy.
Here at AppNeta, we are going all in for the Patriots as they take the field in Indianapolis next week. Team AppNeta is going to be showing their colors all week, inside and outside of the company. We will all be wearing our Patriots jerseys this week, accelerating activity internally in the spirit of the game, and we have a special contest for our customers and friends!
Predict the final score of the game and win a full year of FREE PathView Cloud including path-based SLA verification, in depth netflow/traffic analysis, 100% packet capture capabilities and active application performance monitoring (at a value of $8,900!!).
Tune in and keep your eye on AppNeta as we cheer on the team!
Super Bowl XLVI…The Rematch
Posted by: timferg in: ● January 27, 2012
It’s a rematch four years in the making. On Sunday, Feb. 5, the AFC champion New England Patriots face the NFC champion New York Giants in Super Bowl XLVI (46) in Indianapolis, and Patriots quarterback Tom Brady will be looking to avenge his team’s loss at the hands of Eli Manning and his Giants that occurred in Super Bowl XLII (42). Everyone here at AppNeta is thrilled our home team has made it to the finals and we are ready to celebrate a victory.
We are clearly big fans. Are you? You think you know football?? Predict the final score of Superbowl XLVI and win a fully loaded PathView Cloud subscription featuring:
- NEW m30 with path-based performance validation of up to 300 LAN paths and 80 WAN Paths
- NetFlow/traffic generation and analysis at 1Gbps with fail-to-wire technology
- 100% remote packet capture at 1Gbps
- Up to 50 concurrent calls for pre-deployment validation
- Web application performanceto & from any location
In the event that two people pick the exact same numbers then we will go to time of entry, the early bird will win so submit now!!
So here is our rundown on…The Rematch! Four years after New York stunned previously undefeated New England in the Arizona desert, the Patriots and Giants are going at it again in the Super Bowl. It’s the Patriots’ first appearance since Manning and the Giants upset New England’s pursuit of perfection in 2008. Back then, New England was a 12-point favorite, but New York’s defense battered Brady, sacking him 5 times, and Manning connected with Plaxico Burress on a late touchdown to win the Giants’ third Super Bowl.
That TD came, of course, a few moments after one of the biggest plays in playoff history: Manning escaped the grasp of a few Patriots defenders and found David Tyree, who put New York in scoring position by pinning the football against his helmet amongst a number of Patriot defenders for a jaw-dropping catch.
Similarities between the teams this time around and the teams four years ago have Patriots fans less confident than their other Super Bowl appearances. The Giants enter the Super Bowl playing their best football all season, which is how the Giants entered the playoffs four years ago, becoming the first wild card team to win the Super Bowl in NFL history. They also have a highly touted defense that boasts three of the top pass rushers in the game which was their strength in the 2007-2008 season. The Patriots, once again had one of the top offenses in the league this year, but a subpar defense that ranked second-to-last in the league during the regular season led to plenty of shootouts, and Brady was more than up to the task, throwing for a career-high 5,235 yards while tossing 39 touchdown passes, 33 of which were to Brady’s favorite targets, Tight Ends Rob Gronkowski (17) and Aaron Hernandez (7) and wide receiver Wes Welker (9).
New England, which lost to New York 24-20 in early November, is a 3-point favorite for the Feb. 5 game. The Patriots have won 10 straight, with their last loss being to – you guessed it – the Giants. So, once again, it will be Brady vs. Manning, coaches Bill Belichick vs. Tom Coughlin and the Patriots vs. the Giants.
Tune in next week for an update on which team is in the lead in the AppNeta Superbowl contest.
CEO Notes…New Year, New Office, New Company!
Posted by: melvinjim in: ● January 23, 2012
The last four weeks have been a blur! Between wrapping up our third quarter, the holidays, and, oh-yes, moving the company to downtown Boston, it has been a whirlwind.
In real estate, they say that location is everything. Well, I am starting to think the same might be true for starting a business. For the past 3 years, AppNeta has been located in a quiet office building in Wellesley Hills, MA. The space was certainly suitable to meet our needs, and if you wanted a good seat to see the Boston Marathon go by, then this was the place.
But we wanted to attract young sales talent and, well, they generally don’t live in the Weston/Wellesley area codes. So, as our lease was coming up at year end, the decision was made to move and to make it a big move –into downtown Boston.
What a difference a move makes! We tripled our space in a high timber-ceiling building with tons of windows and light…all this means ENERGY. Despite the fact that we are only consuming a small fraction, the energy level of the entire company has gone up tremendously. I feel that the move was the perfect ending to the transition out of Apparent Networks and is an exclamation point on the launch of AppNeta.
We launched the AppNeta service 2 years ago and, in a short time, we have put a big dent in the world of remote site application and network performance management. The deployment of PathView appliances went from ZERO to SEVERAL THOUSAND in just under 2 years, as our business grew nearly 400% over the past year. Of course the best part is still to come. We have made great progress on our vision to change the game in IT and performance management with our cloud-based service and our hyper-agile development team in Vancouver continues to rock and deliver feature updates to our cloud-based service on a monthly basis (!). In a very short time, we went from a single, yet compelling feature (L3 path performance analysis), to a full fault and performance management suite including netflow generation and analysis, packet capture and analysis, and even application performance analysis for VoIP, Video and Web applications. All simple to deploy and affordable, thanks in large part to the cloud.
And the best part of the story is the part that hasn’t been written yet…AppNeta is changing everything. Stay tuned.
-JimM
Flow Analysis: See Detailed Remote Site Network Usage, Without Breaking the Bank!
Posted by: armstrongsean in: ● January 18, 2012
Before business productivity became dependent on the Internet, smaller companies didn’t spend money on flow data analysis. Even enterprise companies didn’t invest in expensive network hardware capable of delivering flow information at the scattered remote offices. It was never a concern until the Internet became a business and personal life line – and pipeline – regardless of location size. Personal devices such as smartphones, tablets, etc. can consume as much bandwidth as laptop.
IT staff are employed to ensure business data reaches the desired mark. With employees doubling up on bandwidth, network engineers must battle the negative results like slow networks, dropped calls, application failures, transfer/back up failures, unhappy users and potential job loss. All this because Skippy the intern was streaming Netflix on his iPad, sending emails from his smartphone and running Spotify on his laptop. All companies, regardless of size, need to monitor network traffic and usage.
So, here’s the problem. Flow enabled routers are expensive, especially for a small location. Also, companies don’t always have a dedicated IT support staff at the remote sites. Current flow tools require expensive software, server installation, a device capable of generating flow data and manual re-configuration of network devices. Without a dedicated engineer on site with flow expertise, a flow implementation can be a futile effort.
Luckily, AppNeta has filled this gap. The new enhanced flow capabilities require ZERO configuration and installation and NO expensive flow enabled devices. The new charts (non-tech user friendly) and intuitive drilled down visibility shows who is doing what on your network – including who is using which applications, visiting a which websites and other end-user activity to and from a host computer.
AppNeta’s flow capabilities are enabled by a cloud service, just plug our microAppliance into your network (fail-open built in) and see real time data within minutes, eliminating the need for in depth expertise. IT teams can remotely monitor the network usage of remote sites from their office laptops, or even from mobile devices since the updates made are in HTML5.
To walk through the new flow updates to PathView Cloud, watch the recorded webinar, or to see FlowView functioning in real-time on a livenetwork, click through the 24/7 live network monitoring demonstration.
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